Quicklinks:Front Page

Use the winning formula to stay on the road to freedom

Posted: July 1, 2012 - 12:28am

In 1776, it was fear of the King’s authority that kept our ancestors from feeling free. However, since not all battles involve guns, and not all soldiers are in uniform, today, more than 200 years later, many of us are still in bondage to self-hate and fear.

Perhaps that is why James Dillet Freeman, the late Unity Poet Laureate wrote:

Peace is not just the end of war

Peace is a war we have to win first in ourselves

It’s there we have to be set free from ancient fears and old distrust.

There, must the walls come down and hatred cease.

Many years ago, although there were no guns involved, and I wasn’t wearing a prisoner of war uniform, I found myself enslaved and trapped in my own feelings of fear and self-doubt. Desperately seeking the road to freedom from my own self-doubts and fears, I enrolled in the Forum, a weekend of collective and directive therapy that really works if you work it. In fact, that is where I learned how to rid myself of those inner demons that kept me side-tracked from The Road To Personal Freedom.

According to the Forum our Winning Formula is the tool that we use in our attempt to be successful in life. For some, the Winning Formula is: Determination, or Persistence or Resilience, etc. Whatever your Winning Formula is, I’m sure that it has probably made you effective, productive and successful. And that has been your Payoff. But, the negative side of our Winning Formula is that, regardless of how effective, productive and successful we become, there is always something missing that keeps us from feeling truly authentic and free to be who we really are.

That’s because, for the most part, the Winning Formula is about pulling more of the past into the present. That is, believing that if we can just keep on doing what worked in the past, but do it better or faster, our present will improve. However, there is no freedom in pulling more of the past into the present, because when we focus on how things were in the past, we fail to look at the world of possibilities in the present moment.

So regardless of how high we climb, how successful we become by the world’s standards, our Winning Formula ensures that we are never successful enough, never smart enough, young enough, handsome, pretty enough, tall or short enough, never thin enough, never financially secure enough, never spiritual enough. In short, our Winning Formula can ensure that we are never enough period.

Feeling that we are never enough, our Winning Formula becomes a compensation for our failure to reach our own Divine potential. And it can fool us into thinking that if we work harder, or smarter, one day we will feel like we are enough. nd of course, it never happens.

And so, the cost of our Winning Formula can be not winning at all because real freedom never comes from the past. It only comes from allowing the realm of possibilities in the future to impact our present moment where creation is possible.

So what I learned in the Forum that changed my perspective in life was that I could change my future by allowing it, instead of my Past, to impact my present situation whatever it may be. In other words, I learned that I could change my life by allowing the realm of possibilities in my future to impact my Present Moment. Certainly that is what Jesus meant when he said:

“Do not worry about your life ... look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?” — Matthew 6:25-27

In that passage, Jesus was teaching us that in order to be free of worry, we would have to trust God. The way to trust God is to let go of the past, and bring the realm of all possibilities from the future into our present experience.

Now, when I face a challenge, instead of trying to redo the things in the past that did or didn’t work, I look to the realm of possibilities in the future and bring those into my present moment. What unbelievable freedom I feel when I do that!

So on this 4th of July and all through the month, I invite you to set your own, personal firecrackers and celebrate your right to be free from harmful, addictive behaviors of the past. Celebrate your right to be free from dysfunctional emotions like fear and anger, and resentments. Celebrate your freedom from your past to be different regardless of how good or bad it was. And last, but by no means least, celebrate your freedom to live in the present moment where all creation takes place.